Asian Development Bank to provide Georgia with $100 mln to continue reforms to fiscal management

TBILISI. Nov 14 (Interfax) - Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved the provision of a loan of $100 million to Georgia in order to deepen reforms in the sphere of fiscal management and the pension system, ADB said in a statement.

This is the second subprogram of the Fiscal Resilience and Social Protection Support Program. It will facilitate, in particular, resilience to refinancing risks related to high external debt.

The first subprogram, which was approved in 2020, helped raise Georgia's macroeconomic resilience during the Covid-19 pandemic, the statement said.

"Georgia's sound policy response to the Covid-19 crisis has led to a robust economic recovery, but geopolitical uncertainties may still dampen the economic outlook," ADB Director General for Central and West Asia Yevgeny Zhukov was quoted as saying in the statement. "With this subprogram, ADB helps Georgia complete reforms that were earlier initiated to further strengthen the government's capacity to manage fiscal risks [...] and enhance the sustainability of social protection programs," Zhukov said.

Georgia has been a member of the ADB since February 2007. ADB has since become one of Georgia's largest partners, providing loans of almost $4 billion to support the budget and finance infrastructure projects.